Mark Safranko - Hating Olivia: A Love Story (P.S.)

To P.G., for staying the course

I am a fan of marathon runners and soccer players and guys who can go ten rounds with the champ and still manage to finish on their feet. Im also a great admirer of Mark SaFrankos work and have been for years.

As a writer hes the most tenacious son of a bitch I know. Because we share the same occupation and many of the same emotions I can tell you that there are days when Id rather chew lightbulb glass than strap myself to a computer keyboard. Not SaFranko. Compared to Mark SaFranko, Im Tiny Tim. A novice and a flyweight.

Listen to these statistics: A hundred short stories, fifty of them already in print. A box full of poetry and essays. And ten complete novels, eight of them yet to hit the bookshelves. A dozen plays, some produced in New York and others staged in Ireland. SaFranko writes songs too, a hundred and fifty so far.

I know why I write. I write because I must. I cannot stop. Im driven by rage and insanity and crushing ambition. Mark SaFranko scares people like me. I believe the guy would rather write than breathe. I envy his talent and commitment.

Now comes Hating Olivia, my favorite piece of work by the author. It is a story of love and human addiction. Here the scenes

between Max and his lady love are open heart surgery done with an ax. If youre a Henry Miller or Bukowski fan then Hating Olivia is fresh meat, a gift tied together with a bloodstained bow. This is the kind of bookthe kind of memoirthat must have been lived first. Survived. So strap yourself in. Its time for a real treat.

D AN F ANTE

I suffered like the most foolish of fools.

PHILIPPE DJIAN, 37,2 le matin

In the end, one experiences only ones self.

NIETZSCHE

The war was over. Id managed to avoid it, but it didnt mean a thing. Since that timewhen I wasnt on the dole or living off food stampsId worked every job under the sun: factory hand, chauffeur, reporter, bank clerk. I hadnt done any whack-ward time, but members of my immediate and extended family had. Major depression. Bizarre phobias. Alcoholism. Shock treatments. Suicide. All of which worried megenetics are everything. For months at a clip I wandered all over the country. The parade of forgettable days that made up the long, hazy years always seemed to be a matter of struggling to keep my head above water, and a roof over it. It was nothing much of a life.

After the sixties the world had gone to sleep again. The blue-collar suburbs were a drag, but unless you were a millionaire or willing to shack up with three or four other people you couldnt stand or would come to hate in a short time, Manhattan was out of the question. I was neither. That left me out in Jersey, holed up in the attic of a boardinghouse on sedate Park Street in the city of Montfleur at a rent of fifteen bucks per week, excluding telephone charges.

My room was a two-by-four number with a slanting roof that collided with my head a dozen times a day. In the jake were half a refrigerator and a bathtubnot even a shower. There was something elsecockroaches. Lots of them. The black dude next door, a short-order cook by the name of Benny, shared the facilities with me, including the cockroaches. Benny was quiet and not there most of the time, which was okay by me. My window overlooked the train station. It seemed that every other week there was a suicide on the tracks that transported the commuters into the city. I often wondered if or when I would be next.

The landlords were an elderly couple by the name of Trowbridge. Lou, a bag of bones with glasses, happened to be a painter of uncommon talent. His nudes and landscapes decorated every square inch of the faded yellow walls. It looked to me as if hed set out to become some kind of Sisley, or Francis Bacon even, but for whatever mysterious reason hed fallen short of the mark, like most of us do. Lately hed taken to carving fantastic totem poles of all styles and dimensions, an idea hed picked up while visiting his son, an army officer stationed in Alaska. But whether from lack of business sense or sheer bad luck, the poor guy never sold a thing. A regular sad sack, he wore his defeat on his sleeve. Whenever I bumped into Lou in the hallways I could hardly coax two words out of him. He never even talked back when his wife chewed him out for one of his numerous peccadilloes. How many times have I told you to keep the back door shut so the cat doesnt get out? Louhow could you be so stupid! Now whos going to chase that beast all over the neighborhood? Wellwhats your excuse? Nothing? Cat got your tongue? Oh, for heavens sake! What was I thinking when I married such a simp? It was brutal to witness.

Myself, I didnt mind Caroline Trowbridge. Despite my gig on the loading platform, I was forever in arrears with the rent and she never said a word about it. Since she was a gimp and had trouble getting around, she sat in the parlor all day long with her ear pinned to the antique radio. Aside from the problem of her husband, she seemed content with her Puccini and Mahler and Mozart. Whenever I passed en route to my cell, she had a joke for me.

Max, you wouldnt believe what that idiot husband of mine did today !

As I climbed the stairs listening to her tirade, Id catch the man of the house cowering in the shadows. Wed nod at each other, both of us a little embarrassed.

I couldnt say that I knew which end was up, either. One day I pulled the number of an astrologer off the announcement board at a secondhand bookstore in Chelsea. I dialed it that evening and set an appointment for the following week. Before she could cast my horoscope, she needed the date, time, and place of my birth.

December 23, 1950, at seven eighteen P.M., Trenton, New Jersey. I remembered the information from the official hospital record, which my mother had passed on to me years before.

No matter what, I figured, things couldnt get much worse. I was smarting over the bloody breakup of an affair Id been carrying on with the wife of an up-and-coming young attorney in the county prosecutors office. Months later, I still couldnt get her out of my mind. Our dates had consisted of furtive meetings in a practice room in the music department at the college where she taught American literature. While trying to make do on the piano bench, Lynn swore to me that she was going to leave her husband. But beyond fucking her, I didnt quite know what Id do with her if that actually happened, since I didnt have two nickels to rub together and she was used to some of the finer things. Once she came up to my garret and had a good look at the sagging mattress and rotting carpet, she backed off. She could see the invisible writing on those flaking walls, all right. A part-time musician. An aspiring writer. A truck-loading bum who liked to read books and listen to obscure recordsthanks, but no thanks.

Still and all, Lynn haunted my dreams even months later. What made the loss unbearable was her beauty. Id always had an eye for beautyfool that I was, I believed that it counted for something. Like a beggar who covets the palace of the kingdom, I wanted what I couldnt have. But I was tired of coveting the unattainable.

Most of the time when I wasnt stuffing the ass-end of a semi I lay around and readConrad Tolstoy Hamsun Henry Miller Sartre Camus Hesse the Zen masters Nietzsche Cline whoever and whatever I could get my hands on, so long as they held a certain appeal for the outcast. I smoked cigarettes by the carton. I masturbated compulsively over the glossy centerfolds in